1069
Wang Anshi's New Policies begin
The Song reformer, recalled by Emperor Shenzong, launched a breathtaking program of state agricultural loans, currency regulation, civil service exams in practical matters, and militia reform. Traditional Confucians screamed. His twenty years of reforms would transform the Song state and split its elite permanently into factions. The conservative scholar Sima Guang became his fiercest opponent, and their rivalry defined Chinese politics for a generation.
Harrying of the North
Faced with a massive Anglo-Danish rebellion in Yorkshire, William the Conqueror ordered his army to burn villages, kill livestock, and salt fields across the region. For a generation Yorkshire lay empty. Chroniclers estimated a hundred thousand dead from starvation. It was the Conqueror's most ruthless single act. The Domesday Book, compiled seventeen years later, still recorded vast swaths of the north as waste.
Death of Virarajendra Chola Opens a Succession Crisis
The sudden death of Virarajendra left the Chola throne dangerously exposed. His son Athirajendra's brief reign ended violently when Chalukya-Chola prince Kulottunga seized power, inaugurating the Later Chola dynasty. The transition was more palace coup than orderly succession, and it drew the Chalukya and Chola bloodlines into a single royal house - ending their century of warfare not through peace but through dynastic merger.
Green Sprouts Policy Lends to Song Farmers
Wang Anshi's most ambitious reform went straight to the root: the Green Sprouts program offered government loans to farmers at twenty percent annual interest - usurious by modern standards, but a fraction of what private moneylenders charged. The goal was to break the rural debt cycle that turned free peasants into tenant serfs each drought year. Conservative officials were horrified. The farmers, cautiously, borrowed.